48
I slammed on the brakes and threw the car into park in one fluid motion, undid my seat belt, opened the door, and dived out. I knew I was leaving Clayton to fend for himself, but at this point, I was thinking only of Cynthia and Grace. In the couple of seconds I’d had to survey the situation, I’d been unable to spot either of them, but the fact that Cyn’s car was still on the precipice and not in the lake seemed to me a hopeful sign.
I hit the ground and rolled into some high grass, then fired wildly into the sky. I wanted Jeremy to know I had a gun, too, even if I had no skill with it. I came to a stop and maneuvered myself around in the grass so that I was looking back at where Jeremy had been, but now he was gone. I looked about frantically, then saw his head poking out timidly from around the front bumper of the brown Impala.
“Jeremy!” I shouted.
“Terry!” Cynthia. Screaming. Her voice was coming from her car. “Daddy!” Grace.
“I’m here!” I shouted.
From inside the Impala, another voice. “Kill him, Jeremy! Shoot him!” Enid, sitting in the front passenger seat.
“Jeremy,” I called out. “Listen to me. Has your mother told you what happened back at your house? Has she told you why you had to leave so fast?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Enid said. “Just shoot him.”
“What are you talking about?” he shouted back at me.
“She shot a man in your house. A man named Vince Fleming. He’ll be in the hospital by now, telling the police everything. He and I went to Youngstown last night. I figured it out. I’ve already called the police. I don’t know how you originally planned this to go. Make Cynthia look like she was going crazy is my guess, make it look like she might even have had something to do with her brother and mother’s deaths, then she comes up here, kills herself. Is that it, more or less?”
I waited for an answer. When none came, I continued, “But the cat’s out of the bag, Jeremy. It’s not going to work anymore.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Enid said. “I told you to shoot him. Do what your mother says.”
“Mom,” Jeremy said, “I don’t know… I’ve never killed any one before.”
“Suck it up! You’re about to kill those two.” I could make out the back of Enid’s head, see her motioning to Cynthia’s car.
“Yeah, but all I have to do is push the car over. This is different.”
Clayton had the passenger door of the Honda open and was slowly getting to his feet. I could see under the car, spotted his shoes, his sockless ankles as he struggled to stand. Granules of windshield glass fell from his trousers to the ground.
“Get back in the car, Dad,” Jeremy said.
“What?” Enid said. “He’s here?” She caught sight of him in the passenger door mirror. “For Christ’s sake!” she said. “You stupid old coot! Who let you out of the hospital?”
Slowly he shuffled his way toward the Impala. When he got to the back of the car, he placed his hands on the trunk, steadied himself, caught his breath. He appeared to be on the verge of collapse. “Don’t do this, Enid,” he wheezed.
Then Cynthia’s voice: “Dad?”
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said. He tried to smile. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all this.”
“Dad?” she said again. Incredulous. I couldn’t see Cynthia’s face from my position, but I could imagine how shocked she must have looked.
Evidently, while Jeremy and Enid had somehow managed to abduct Cynthia and Grace and get them up here above the quarry, they had not bothered to bring them up to speed.
“Son,” Clayton said to Jeremy, “you have to put an end to this. Your mother, she’s wrong to drag you into this, make you do all these bad things. Look at her.” He was telling Jeremy to look at Cynthia. “That’s your sister. Your sister. And that little girl, she’s your niece. If you help your mother do what she wants you to do, you’ll be no better a man than me.”
“Dad,” said Jeremy, still crouched around the front of the Impala, “why are you leaving everything to her? You don’t even know her. How could you be so mean to me and Mom?”
Clayton sighed. “It’s not always about the two of you,” he said.
“Shut up!” Enid snipped.
“Jeremy!” I called out. “Get rid of the gun. Give it up.” I had both hands wrapped around Vince’s weapon and was lying there in the grass. I didn’t know the first thing about guns, but I knew I needed to hold on to it as tightly as I could.
He rose up from his hiding spot in front of the Impala, fired. Dirt kicked up just to my right, and I instinctively rolled left.
Cynthia screamed again.
I heard fast-moving steps along the gravel. Jeremy was running, closing in on me. I stopped rolling, aimed up at the figure closing in on me, fired. But it went wide and before I could shoot again Jeremy kicked at the gun, the toe of his shoe slamming into the back of my right hand.
I lost my grip. The gun flew off into the grass.
His next kick caught me in the side, in my rib cage. The pain shot through me like a bolt of lightning. I’d barely registered that pain when he rammed his foot into me again, this time with enough force that I rolled over onto my back. Bits of dirt and grass stuck to my cheek.
But that still wasn’t enough for him. There was one last kick.
I couldn’t catch my breath. Jeremy stood over me, looking down with contempt, as I gasped for air.
“Shoot him!” Enid said. “If you won’t do it, give me back my gun and I’ll do it myself.”
He still had the gun in his hand, but he just stood there with it. He could have put a bullet in my brain as easily as dropping a coin into a parking meter, but the resolve was not there.
I was starting to get some air into my lungs, my breathing was returning to normal, but I was in tremendous pain. A couple of cracked ribs, I was sure of it.
Clayton, still using the trunk to support himself, looked at me, his eyes filled with sadness. I could almost read his thoughts. We tried, he seemed to be saying. We gave it our best shot. We meant well. And the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I rolled over onto my stomach, slowly got to my knees. Jeremy found my gun in the grass, picked it up, tucked it into the back of his trousers. “Get up,” he said to me.
“Are you not listening?” Enid screamed. “Shoot him!”
“Momma,” he said, “maybe it makes more sense to put him in the car. With the others.”
She thought about that. “No,” she said. “That doesn’t work. They have to go into the lake without him. It’s better that way. We’ll have to kill him someplace else.”
Clayton, using his hands, one over the other, was moving up along the side of the Impala. He still appeared on the verge of collapse.
“I…I think I’m going to pass out,” he said.
“You stupid bastard!” Enid shouted at him. “You should have stayed in the hospital and died there.” She was having to move her neck around so much, trying to keep track of what was going on, I thought it might snap. I could see the handles of her wheelchair rising above the sills of the back door windows. The ground was too bumpy, too uneven, to bother getting it out so she could move around.
Jeremy was forced to choose between keeping an eye on me and running over to help his father. He decided to attempt both.
“You don’t move,” he said, keeping the gun pointed in my direction as he backstepped over to the Impala. He was about to open the back door so his father could sit down, but it was filled with the wheelchair, so he opened the driver’s door.
“Sit down,” Jeremy said, glancing from his father to me and back again. Clayton shuffled the extra couple of steps, then slowly dropped himself into the seat.
“I need some water,” he said.